4th of July, 1st night Pam out of town on her NY trip to visit her parents. Had been planning to try this, so figured, why not?

In the ever-attempting-to-try-and-eat-healthier dept, have put some veggies on the list and continue trying others. Tonight, I whipped up a combination. Real-meat-and-not-real-meat. 2 veggie burgers, 6 turkey meatballs, and some shredded chicken. I whipped ’em up in the skillet, added a bunch of onion, half a yellow pepper (I think it was yellow, could’ve been a red one), and a whole cup of quinoa. Little olive oil to cook the veggie burgers and meatballs/chicken, little beef gravy from a jar that was almost empty and sitting in the fridge, and a couple of croutons from a bag that was long overdue to be emptied.

FaceTime screenshot of the finished dish.

My skillet problem presented itself early. Lid on, and I can hear stuff cooking. Lid off, and I have no clue what’s happening – or if anything’s happening at all. Not being used to skilleting, this created several issues. Mainly: is it done? No? How do you know? Maybe it’s done. It smells done. If it’s not done now, how long ’til it is done, and, how will you know?

After several taste-tests, with results varying from: ‘meatballs still frozen’ to ‘veggie burgers turning into swamp patties’, I finally gave up, added my raw onion and diced pepper, and tossed in the remnants from the gravy jar. Screw it, I figured, if it all went south, I could always toast a Pop-Tart. I even got some cherry ones so I could tell the doc I was adding more fruit to my diet.

Twenty minutes or so later, though, I had a reasonable facsimile of dinner. Edible, to be sure. In fact, more than edible. True, the sink was filled with utensils I rarely if ever use. But, on the up side? That’s more pepper than I’ve eaten fresh in about a year, collectively. Lot of onion, too. All high up on the “Try to eat these” list. Used only a little bit of the really good olive oil, another healthy plus. No red meat. 2 veggie burger patties. And of course, the quinoa, which is this amazing super food. I guess it’s similar enough to rice to be passable, so in my stewy veggie/white meat Frankendinner, the verdict? It worked well enough. Pure green tea, unsweetened (save for a couple of drops of blackberry MIO), to wash it all down. Not bad. And, even for me, plenty of chow.

I have no clue what it looked like in the bowl, but presentation? Not high on the blind guy’s priorities list. Reasonably-healthy dinner 1 of (possibly) 8? Check.